Rebuilding Kathmandu - the seen and unseen

Nepal never fails to amaze me.  Resilience through and through.  I first arrived in Nepal fifteen years ago.  The royal family had just been assassinated.  The country was in complete turmoil.  Curfews every night, strikes throughout the day, and in the midst of a Maoist uprising which continued for a decade from 1996 until 2006.  And then of course the earthquake that shook the very core of the kingdom in April 2015. Scientists concur that tension is still building under the tectonic plates where just a slight shift, a movement for a minute or less could easily throw the country back up and land it in rubble.  India then enforced a fuel embargo on the recovering nation, which left massive cues of vehicles waiting (for days) outside gas stations and a bitter winter where people just trying to survive cut down whatever trees they could find to heat their homes and cook their food.  Now even though the embargo has been lifted the fuel shortage is still dire.  The poor quality black market fuel has also left many people in the city sick with chest infections respiratory problems.  Nepal now ranks 177 out of 178 countries for air quality.

Likewise, even though buildings have began to be reconstructed, thousands of families still live under plastic tarpaulins, just a stones throw away from where I am sitting.  And I am sitting directly in front of Boudhanath stupa.  Declared a UNESCO heritage site in 1979, and constructed  somewhere around the 4^th or the 5^th century.  Boudhanath even pre-dates  Kathmandu as a pivotal pit stop on the trade route from Tibet to India.  However, the largest stupa in the world also faltered under the tremor of the earthquake.  It is now topless. Right now hundreds of Tibetan and Nepali Buddhists are circumnavigating the fallen stupa.  It is sunset and time for a dedicated daily ritual. Reconstruction began with the ritual placement of a new central pole or "life tree" for the stupa at the top of the dome.  Piles of bricks are situated ramshackle all around it, along with wooden scaffolding where teams of men and women have been working on its reconstruction.  In contrast to many of the other national heritage sites in Kathmandu affected by the earthquake, Boudhanath was the first to be reconstructed.  The Nepali government refused help from international archaeologists for the reconstruction of its ancient sites, and apart from the self-funded and motivated Tibetan community at Boudha, little work has been done on the other affected sites.  Politics, money and corruption merge, and people complain daily that if only a small percentage of the money that flowed into Nepal after the earthquake had gone to rebuilding infrastructure the country would be as good as new.  That isn’t the case, and the thoughts of the powerful monsoon rain hold a more immediate threat than another quake.

In the background stands Kopan monastery – the working monastery founded to share Tibetan Buddhism with seekers from the West.  Which brings in the other reminder – of the fusion of Kingdoms which Nepal now represents, with a huge population of first to fourth generation Tibetan refugees.  Yet what is missing right now is one of Nepal’s major sources of income – tourism.  The manager of the café I am in joked that “they are on their way – as we speak – thousands of people travelling to Nepal”.  I’m sitting on an empty rooftop with spectacular views.  Including so much of that which is unseen.  

My last visit to Nepal was three years ago.  It is shocking to see what has fallen to the ground.  Yet what has risen (yet again) is a collective movement towards rebuilding life.  When I was in Kolkata just a few weeks ago, it word had it that the earthquake had rapidly increased the number of trafficked children and women to India.  Massive numbers of displaced families meant it was even easier for traffickers to trick, lure or steal girls to sell into bonded slavery and prostitution.  An unofficial estimate of an NGO in Kathmandu says that, at any point of time, brothels in India house around 150,000 to 400,000 girls from the Himalayan country.

Just as the rest of my trip has been guided by spontaneity, the same applies to landing here in Nepal.  It was unexpected and primarily to renew my Indian visa.  Yet this is my sixth visit to Nepal and on many occasions I have had the opportunity of being able to work here.  One of the projects I worked on was a study of the effects of the conflict on children and in particular in regards to infectious diseases.  The research revealed that many children moved to the streets either to earn money or because the men of the family had left to work in India or the Middle East (Nepal still has a huge migrant workforce).  Likewise many girls and young women began to work in bars – small establishments which go hand in hand with lap dancing and prostitution.  As a result there had been a rapid increase in HIV/AIDS.  

I have been fortunate enough to connect with some wonderful organizations working to rehabilitate survivors of trafficking and provide skills to girls and women who wanted to move out of a profession they had never intended to be in.  Today I ran a workshop for women who were now reintegrated back into their family life.  My intention was simply to provide some relief through movement.  Yet my workshop was perfectly timed to end after a session by a psychotherapist on feeling , recognizing and integrating emotions.  After just one hour of “play” we had covered a great deal of material.  The same themes appeared as in Kolkata:  The women are so busy taking care of others that the very idea of even “feeling” the body was a totally new concept.  Basic movements were a struggle, and this shocked them.  Very quickly they said they felt “relaxed”.  I asked them to share about their experiences and after ever answer from the sixteen women I realized that I continue to underestimate the effect of sharing this practice with survivors.  As a result, the team asked me to go back tomorrow and run a workshop with their staff.  The aim is to provide them with tools to allow the women and children they work with to physically embody the concepts they are teaching.  Amazed at how my work keeps going deeper, how it is able to be guided by the participants, and due to its very simplicity, how it can have profound effects in a very short time.